Even Nobel Prize winners deal with imposter syndrome

In a story from 2025, neuroscientist Ardem Patapoutian discusses immigrating to the U. S., finding belonging, and pioneering touch research.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  WNYC is supported by Bayer. Science is about asking questions, testing, trying again. It's not easy, but it's relentless. It evolves, and that's why science delivers. Learn more at sciencedelivers.com.

• 0:17Flora Lichtman?

  Hey, it's Flora, and you're listening to Science Friday. Today, we are revisiting one of my favorite interviews from last year. I hope you enjoy it. I want you to focus on your hands. What are your fingertips feeling right now? Maybe it's the cool screen of your phone or the tug of your dog's leash. But how do physical forces like pressure and temperature get turned into a sensation? A sensation we know and love, the sense of touch. A few decades ago, Dr. Ardem Patapoutian set out to investigate that fundamental question, the biology of our sense of touch, which was a complete mystery at the time.

• 1:01Flora Lichtman?

  Through a long process of gene elimination, he identified a new class of sensors in the cell membrane that turned pressure into an electrical signal. He changed the game in the field of sensation and perception. And in 2021, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. So today, we are sitting down with Ardem, a neuroscientist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, to hear about how he thinks about science, what fires him up, and what keeps him going. Ardem, welcome to Science Friday.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Thank you so much. Glad to be here.

• 1:31Flora Lichtman?

  So you made this huge breakthrough, and I think it's tempting for outsiders, anyway, to see it as destiny, like, oh, you must have been born to be a scientist, or you always knew that this would be your path. Is that your story?

• 1:47Speaker 02

  That's no, almost the opposite of it. It's just nothing close to it, actually. I was, I was, I was actually thinking of writing an autobiography, and I was talking to different people I could work with. And I quit the idea because of that reason. They kept trying to pinpoint this moment in my childhood where, where this was actually destined. To be true, and I just feel like, you know, there is lots of convoluted roads and lots of luck, lots of things that no one could have predicted. I just love doing science. I was just finding interesting questions to go after. And certainly in the early years, never thought about getting this kind of recognition.

• 2:32Flora Lichtman?

  Where did you think you were gonna head? When you were a kid, did you have a vision for your future?

• 2:36Speaker 02

  I didn't, but my parents, you know, I'm an immigrant from Lebanon of Armenian origin. And a lot of folks I know in this category want a medical doctor in the family. We have two other siblings and the others like couldn't stand the sight of a cockroach. So they thought that I would be the one to become a medical doctor.

• 2:57Flora Lichtman?

  They were too squeamish.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  They were too squeamish, but I was very eager to kill them with my feet. So I was destined to become a medical doctor. That's my story. And honestly, that stayed with me just because of I hadn't found anything else till as an undergrad at UCLA, realizing that class sizes were too big and I was not getting to know professors well enough for them to write me a letter of recommendation. So I had this brilliant idea that I could work in a lab, get to know a professor, and they'll write me a letter of recommendation for medical school. And within a few weeks, I like literally fell in love with the process of doing science. And slowly, I realized, okay, so maybe this is what I should do.

• 3:44Flora Lichtman?

  And you were studying fruit fly genetics, right?

• 3:46Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 3:47Flora Lichtman?

  In the first lab that you worked in?

• 3:48Speaker 02

  That's right. I mean, ironically, I used to absolutely dislike lab classes. I think partly because you have this very limited time to do something. You know the answer already. You're just trying to do things to get the right answer. And often it doesn't work and you have to say why it didn't work. That's no fun. Real lab work is the complete opposite. First of all, you don't know the answer. You're asking a question for which no one knows the answer, and you're designing experiments to find it. And of course, there's a lot of failure. A lot of times, it doesn't work. But I find that process of thinking of the question and then designing experiments and then...

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Once in a while, you get this answer that just, you know, hits you that, oh, my gosh, this makes so much sense and no one knows this. I'm the only one who knows this right now.

• 4:39Flora Lichtman?

  Is that the feeling that you're chasing?

• 4:41Speaker 02

  That's the feeling you're chasing for sure. I mean, there's lots of other things. I love now the process of talking to my trainees and working along with them to get these ideas, analyze data, you know, come up with experiments. But that aha moment of finding a cool result, there's just nothing like it.

• 5:02Flora Lichtman?

  When did you first feel like this is who you are, that you were a scientist, that this is, you know, an identity you could claim?

• 5:10Speaker 02

  That's so interesting you ask that because I, for the longest time, was cautious of using the word. For me, a scientist was this, you know, I didn't immediately identify with it because of my background, not thinking about it. So in public, even when I was an assistant professor, I would say things like, I'm a researcher. I wouldn't say I'm a scientist.

• 5:35Flora Lichtman?

  Was it imposter syndrome?

• 5:37Speaker 02

  I guess it must be. And it took me a long time to say that, yeah, I'm a scientist. It's bizarre now that I think about it.

• 5:47Flora Lichtman?

  Why do you think that is?

• 5:50Speaker 02

  I was, as I mentioned, I was an immigrant. I came to the United States from Lebanon. At that point, as a naive 18-year-old, I didn't even know that a career in science was a possibility. And so I've kind of, kind of stumbled into it and step by step, getting used to the idea that, yeah, this is cool and I get to do this and I get, I write grants and get funds to do curiosity-driven research. It gets time to get used to it, I guess.

• 6:21Flora Lichtman?

  I want to go back to that moment when you came to the US.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 6:27Flora Lichtman?

  You were 18 at the time and you were coming without your parents, right?

• 6:31Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 6:32Flora Lichtman?

  What was that like for you and how did you find yourself here?

• 6:35Speaker 02

  I grew up in Lebanon. I was literally eight years old when the civil war started there. So not the most easiest of childhoods. And but the war was there. You just got used to it. But one event right before I came, a few months before I came, I got held by some militia folks. They suspected me to be someone I'm not, I guess, and they held me for a few hours. And when I got out of that situation, I literally came home and I said, I gotta leave. I can't, I can't be here anymore. And so I was already going to the American University of Beirut. I had one year of my college education there. So it was a very abrupt coming to US.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  And financially, we're not very well off. So I, you know, when I came to California, I was not a resident yet. But I did come with a green card because my mom's sister had been living in the US for a long time and they had sponsored us. So for a year, I had to work some odd jobs and become a California resident so I could apply and go back to school.

• 7:40Flora Lichtman?

  What kind of odd jobs?

• 7:42Speaker 02

  Well, it's funny because I worked in a, I found a job at a Subway, making sandwiches and at a shoe store in a mall, two part-time jobs. And I really disliked it and I had a nice college life with a great social circle. And I was almost thinking of going back. It's funny how life decisions get made. You know why I didn't go back? The main reason was the day before I came here, like 30 of my friends back in Lebanon threw a massive party for me. And it was just a wonderful time and I hugged and kissed everyone and said goodbye.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  And I was literally too ashamed to go back three weeks later and saying, oops, it didn't work out. But thanks for the party, guys.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  And so

• 8:33Flora Lichtman?

  Pride, kept you, kept you trying.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  So but while I was finding those, my, you know, through relatives and friends in our Armenian community, there was this Armenian newspaper that had an English section. And my English was not that great, but somehow I became the English section editor. And I did other things like take the newspapers, did a post office, and I even got to write horoscopes, which is one of my career highlights still.

• 9:03Flora Lichtman?

  Were you a good horoscope writer?

• 9:05Speaker 02

  I think so. I mean, I, I tried to do a good job. I, I would even try to write specific messages to my friends for specific months so that they, I get to give them unsolicited advice.

• 9:18Flora Lichtman?

  What's your sign? A question that's never been asked on Science Friday.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Libra. Yes.

• 9:27Flora Lichtman?

  That adds up. That adds up. In the public Nobel Prize write-up, you talk about growing up in Lebanon and, and living through the civil war, and this moment when you were held by armed militants. I wondered how you thought about that, if you felt it was important to share that part of your story.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  Hmm. Absolutely. I'll, I'll share something else with you. I mean, when I first came to US, being an 18-year-old guy from Lebanon, and the name Lebanon and Beirut is of course associated with terrorism. And I actually, kind of a bit ashamed of this, but I tried to put that out of my, kind of, history. And I wouldn't talk about this stuff at all before.

• 10:16Flora Lichtman?

  Really?

• 10:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. And in my CV, my resume, for example, I used to say, graduated from UCLA 1990. The fact that I was, you know, one year at the American University of Beirut, I took it out. I mean, I thought I didn't get a degree from it, so it's not like I'm lying. But I, I was kind of separating myself from, from that, just because of what I thought people would react, I guess, because of it. And, but the funny thing, especially after the Nobel, you know, folks from Lebanon and Armenia have been so proud of, of me and my achievements. And it's, it touched a nerve in a way. You know, I've gotten

• 11:00Speaker 02

  These wonderful letters from elementary school kids from here to Los Angeles and Armenian schools saying things like, you know, you look like me. I never thought science was a possibility. If you can do it, maybe I can do it. And so, you know, when you hear things like this, you kind of take a step back and say, yes, I can just stay in the lab and do my science. But if this is the example that from Lebanon, someone of Armenian origin can come as an immigrant with very little money and no idea of what they're going to do and achieve this. And if that's an example for a young kid to be involved more in research or education, then be a fool not to take advantage of

• 11:45Speaker 02

  this platform.

• 11:48Flora Lichtman?

  You know, President Trump has moved to make visas for skilled workers. These H1 visas come with a hundred thousand dollar fee. And, you know, of course, we're seeing ICE raids across the country. And science in the US has always relied on attracting talented people from across the world. Do you see this changing? What do you think the repercussions of this are?

• 12:12Speaker 02

  Obviously, I feel very strongly about this. I think in today's policies, I would either not come or not make it here. You know, I got into UCLA using Pell Grants, which, you know, I don't even know if they exist. Or if they do, it's a very smaller scale as it was. I know running a lab now is that my lab is a beautiful meeting place of people from all over the world. At any time, we have people from US, from Mexico, from Europe, from Asia. And all these, you know, minds come together to come up with these discoveries that are, yes, curiosity driven. But, you know, every medicine, every

• 12:55Speaker 02

  health solution starts with curiosity driven research. And this is a beautiful international effort. And we actually absolutely lead the world in this arena. And we're kind of giving it away. It's beyond frustrating. It's mind boggling.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  I have a postdoctoral fellow in my lab who's from China originally. He came to the United States, one of the smartest guys you can imagine. He went to Stanford for graduate school, got his PhD. He's doing postdoctoral research with me. Initially, when I talked to him about what he wanted to do next, he wanted to do research in the United States. But recently, he's applying in China. There's so much money. They treat scientists great. And he's most likely going to go back. So here's one example of someone we've invested so much effort and money to train them as a great scientist, and we're just letting them go. It just makes no sense.

• 14:01Flora Lichtman?

  Let's go back to your story. So you were bit by the science bug. You dropped the pre-med aspirations. Let's fast forward to when you started your lab. You started your lab looking at developmental biology, how neurons become tuned for certain jobs. And then you switched gears to ask this bigger, more fundamental question, which is looking at the molecular biology that underpins our sense of touch. What was that decision like? I mean, how much was known about that question when you started? And did it feel risky to switch gears like that?

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Yes, it was risky. And part of the reason I think I took the jump is because I was a bit naive and was not worried about competition. I was not worried about getting into a field that I knew nothing about. You know, if you get trained well in science, you learn to ask, what's the most important unanswered question that I have the tools to study it and find answers in the next five to 10 years? That's our approach. And so my thought process at the time was that the development of these neurons is very interesting, but there are so many neurons that develop to do the same thing.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  But these sensory neurons I was studying do something fundamentally different, which is they kind of turn physics, you know, temperature, pressure into an electrical activity that neurons can interpret and propagate that signal. And so, but how this was done was not known. Most of biology is concerned about chemical signalings, whether it's a hormone being secreted or neurotransmitter that binds to a receptor, changes confirmation and starts a signaling process. But how do you sense pressure? That's like pretty much nothing at the molecular level was known in our bodies. And so it was very interesting. And again, I just made the leap because I thought it was a more interesting question

• 16:10Speaker 02

  to ask.

• 16:11Flora Lichtman?

  I mean, this gets to a question I'm interested in, which is, you know, what traits make a good scientist? What traits are important for being a good scientist? And is, you know, is naivete one of them?

• 16:22Speaker 02

  I think in some aspects. I think about this quite a bit. And I think what I've seen is that you have to have quite a few different characteristics. One is you have to be a dreamer.

• 16:35Flora Lichtman?

  A dreamer?

• 16:36Speaker 02

  You have to be a dreamer because if you're not a dreamer, you're not going to think big. But then you have to superimpose some practical aspects on it, which I know sound like contradicting things. But it's the, when I said, come up with the biggest question, but then I also said that you have the tools to solve it in the next five, 10 years. That's the practical side. I've also found that people who are, read a lot of the literature of what's already known, kind of primes their mind. And by reading, I mean, scientific literature, they also get trained on what questions were

• 17:19Speaker 02

  available out there and were solved and how. So that kind of also trains your mind of how to approach questions and how to solve them. So reading a lot, dreaming a lot and being practical.

• 17:30Flora Lichtman?

  Being a dreamer and being practical. I love that. And I mean, Ardem, Libras are all about balance.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  Oh, my goodness. I never thought of it that way.

• 17:39Flora Lichtman?

  The dreamer and the practical merged. It's, it is your sign.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  Wow. Okay. I learned something about myself today.

• 17:49Flora Lichtman?

  We have to take a quick break, but don't go away. When we come back, more conversation with Ardham about his research and his life in science.

• 18:03Flora Lichtman?

  Hey, Flora here. We are wrapping up Science Friday's fiscal year on June 30th, and we could use your support. We're aiming to raise $100,000 to close out our budget. And with your help, I know we can do it. If Science Friday is valuable to you, if you rely on our reporting to make sense of the world, or even just to give you your daily dose of joy and wonder, please consider going to sciencefriday.com/donate to make a donation. It's fast, easy, and secure, and any amount you can swing will help to sustain us in this critical moment. You know, I know I've said it before, but I really mean it. Science Friday can only continue with your support. That's sciencefriday.com/donate, and thanks.

• 18:47Speaker 03

  Support for Science Friday comes from the Heising Simons Foundation. Unlocking knowledge, opportunity, and possibilities. More at hsfoundation.org.

• 19:00Flora Lichtman?

  How do you think about picking the right questions?

• 19:04Speaker 02

  I think this is the biggest thing, right? If it was easy to teach, or if it can be answered in a couple of sentences, then everybody could do wonderful science. So it's very difficult, because, I mean, other than coming up with a big unanswered question that you think you have the tools to answer them, things of grit and persistence, and how many questions you ask at the same time, when to know when to quit, that's actually really important. Because some people get too attached to an idea, and as they're getting negative, negative feedback that this is not working, they keep trying. Sometimes, all of a sudden, it works. Sometimes, it never works.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  So it's a complicated question, and this is a good opportunity to always mention that luck has a huge part in success in science, and probably any other field as well.

• 19:56Flora Lichtman?

  Let's get into the nitty gritty of touch. I mean, it feels like touch is so complex. Like, there are all these experiences that I might put into the bucket of feeling, but they're different. You know, there's the pressure, the temperature, friction, irritation. Are they all connected? I mean, how do we turn them all into one sensation?

• 20:17Speaker 02

  So this was a rather surprise of our findings, the consequence of it. I'll give you an example. Olfaction, to smell.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  You know, Linda Buck and Richard Axel got the Nobel Prize before on finding the sensors for smell. And there are hundreds, almost a thousand receptors for smell. Because every volatile molecule has a shape. And then you have to evolve all these different receptors to be able to recognize the different these molecules and form an image of your brain of what that smells like, based on some innate and experience, for example. So people were shocked, including us, that PSO2, this single ion channel, this single sensor or receptor, is doing the vast majority of touch sensing, whether that's a gentle

• 21:09Speaker 02

  breeze on your hands, your hair's moving, slight pressure on your arm. And interestingly, biologists had previously shown that there are distinct touch-specialized neurons that are actually specialized to respond to very specific forms of mechanical stimuli. Some only respond to vibrations, some respond to pressure, some respond to hair deflection. But when we talk about touch, we don't actually sense these individual things. We sense touch the way we know touch, which is kind of the addition or the summation,

• 21:49Speaker 02

  synthesis of all these different fibers coming together to give us that impression of touch. And so one molecule doing all of this is surprising and fascinating.

• 22:02Flora Lichtman?

  I mean, that's what makes it a huge discovery, I assume, in part, too. It's sort of a very important gatekeeper.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  I think so. And on top of it, I think it's this idea that we talked about. And, you know, I received this with David Julius, who started working on temperature sensation before us, and we contributed to it, too. It's this idea of the unique property of translating physical stimuli into an electrical signal. Again, very unique among the rest of biology to be able to accomplish this.

• 22:37Flora Lichtman?

  You also work on proprioception, you know, this ability to sense where your body is in space.

• 22:44Flora Lichtman?

  Does that mean that a gymnast or a dancer might have sort of better sensors than I do? Or sort of built different biologically?

• 22:54Speaker 02

  First of all, proprioception is my favorite sense. The fascinating thing about it is that there's many people who don't know what proprioception is. Sometimes it's called the sixth sense.

• 23:05Flora Lichtman?

  The close talkers.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And I often thought about why is it that people don't know it? And I think the main answer I've come up with is because we can take it for granted because you can't turn it off. You can close your eyes and imagine a world without sight. But I cannot turn off proprioception. It's always there. I know where our damn limbs are at all times. I know what space I occupy. It's almost like at a basic level, physical consciousness. And we need this so much. It's just amazing of what you cannot do if you didn't have this. If you didn't have proprioception, I wouldn't be able to get up and walk easily.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  It's just something that we really need it for basic, basic our needs. And so, of course, this is very relevant to what you asked. Our people, Michael Jordan has much better P S O two for making all those shots compared to us. There's no clear answer that that's the case. And the reason for that is all of these senses, of course, are very complex circuits, right? So we're talking about P S O that I sometimes compare it to the the switch to turn on light when you get into a room. It's that first turn on or off. It doesn't control everything. The the light fixture, all of those, the wiring controlled output.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  And so, you know, you could easily have the same amount of P S O two. But you put, for example, because you practice more, more part of your brain is focused on making you as coordinated as possible in shooting a basketball. And all that stuff that's happening in your brain, the processing would make you more coordinated, for example.

• 24:55Flora Lichtman?

  You know, touch feels so fundamental to the human experience and very personal.

• 25:03Flora Lichtman?

  Do you think that helped your work in some way? I mean, do you think it would have gotten the same attention if it had been about ion channels that did something else?

• 25:12Speaker 02

  That's a fair point.

• 25:15Flora Lichtman?

  I don't mean it in a bad way.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  No, no, I didn't take it in a bad way, but that's, it's actually interesting you ask that because, you know, people in the field talk about these things of who deserves a Nobel, who deserves recognition. And obviously, the importance of the biology has to match what one could explain to a layperson. And so I think studying nitty gritty of ion channels of how a liver enzyme is activated is not going to make into, into the same kind of recognition. But I think that's also fair. This is what we care about.

• 25:59Speaker 02

  And also, there's a misconception on if Nobel always gives things that have translational possibilities. And it's not, because the category that I received it in is in physiology or medicine. It's not and medicine. And so it could or could not be. I mean, our research ending up being very relevant for pain and many other indications. But once again, it's the, the recognition is for something important for biology. And I think for it being important and recognized by laypeople as touch is important, of course plays a role.

• 26:38Flora Lichtman?

  What do you still want to know about touch and sensation?

• 26:42Speaker 02

  You know, our big direction now is we kind of use this molecule to check boxes and say, among the systems that we knew dependent on pressure sensing, like touch, proprioception, some forms of pain, even blood pressure sensing, all depend on these psoion channels. We are finding completely new, understudied areas of biology where pressure sensing is very important. I'll give you one example, that we have a manuscript that's going to be published very soon. Is pregnancy during pregnancy, it's known that the uterus expands hundreds of

• 27:25Speaker 02

  times. And we know a lot about how hormones regulating pregnancy and childbirth. But what about the pressure? There's massive amount of pressures at play, obviously during pregnancy.

• 27:37Flora Lichtman?

  Any pregnant person will tell you, yes, there are.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Yes. And so are there instructive mechanical cues that the body listens to and uses to process this? And indeed, we found that without these pressure sensors, and there's two of them, PS1 and 2, only if you don't have both of them. This is in an animal model that pregnancy can can go to term, but parturition, the birthing, is massively affected by this. So it's pressure sensing is required for birthing effect. Now, I think that's a fascinating new finding that will open up a whole field now studying what are the downstream consequences of this pressure sensing? How does it communicate with the hormonal system? And it could, of

• 28:24Speaker 02

  course, have very important translational aspects to it as well. And so we're actually, I think, in a more exciting place in science than where we started, where these touch sensors now are telling us all over our bodies where else pressure sensing is important for physiology. And it's just fascinating for us to just keep going. And hopefully, in a few years, we'll find out that people had massively underestimated the importance of pressure sensing in our in our bodies.

• 28:57Flora Lichtman?

  That's fascinating. I want to talk a little bit about how to run a lab. So someone come, let's say someone comes to you with an idea or wants to join your lab. How do you think about whether to bring them on? What do you look for?

• 29:12Speaker 02

  You know, I keep coming back to this. The dreamer plus the practical. Because in addition to this, you know, being a big thinker and dreamer, I'm also looking for their, what they've accomplished in the past. And also practical things like how are they going to get along with people in my lab? Because, you know, it's hard work to work in a lab. It's long hours. It's, uh, science is full of failures. A lot of things fail before they don't work. If you don't have a lab that gets along and works well together, things will, you will notice things are not working well in the lab overall. So lab morale and getting along is very important. So again, I'm emphasizing that there's this practical aspect

• 29:56Speaker 02

  that I pay a lot of attention to in addition to their intellectual abilities.

• 30:01Flora Lichtman?

  This managerial aspect, you know, I've heard from scientists that you get to a certain point in your career and your job becomes less about research and more about being the CEO of a small, you know, multimillion dollar organization, which is your lab. And that this is not something that scientists are trained in. Is that true in your experience? How do you think about that? And do you think that's a flaw in the system?

• 30:27Speaker 02

  I think it's true if you let it. I, this is such an important point for me because I feel like, I don't want to be an administrator. I want to be a scientist. And I also feel like if I want to be creative, I can't be very busy, um, you know, just doing administrative stuff or managerial stuff. So, you know, I usually also give advice to young scientists. And the number one rule I have on there is don't be too busy. And one of my best ideas have come from while I was hiking or running. So I really value this. And I take steps to make sure that I don't become too busy, even with the recent recognition I've been able to do it.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  And one of the ways, for example, is that I have meeting-free Tuesdays. So I don't hold any meetings on Tuesday, but it's just a free day to read and think. Such a luxury to be able to do this. I realize I'm lucky that I can do this, but I think for a scientist, it's just so important. You know, if I accepted every travel invitation, I could travel every day of the year. But again, I have a rule of doing 12 travels a year and then I stop. And so again, I think one could take steps to ensure that these pressures don't turn or take over their main job, which I think is to be a researcher and a scientist.

• 31:53Flora Lichtman?

  How do you think about failure in your work?

• 31:56Speaker 02

  I guess that's one thing we didn't talk about. For a good scientist, they have to be able to accept and experience failure again and again and again. And that's a trait that, you know, I'm used to it. I accept it. And the nice thing about experience, which, you know, as I told you, I've been running my lab for 25 years and I could tell this to my trainees when they're struggling after a year and a half, that I've seen this again and again, and you're going to overcome this. You know, we have a method. You have multiple projects. One of them is going to work great. And so I think it's just managing failure, but there is no science without failure. Most of the experiments we do don't work.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  I always also say that everybody that I know got into science, yes, to help humanity and all that, but if you ask honestly, it's because people think it's fun to do science. And, you know, if it stops being fun, then why would you do it? And so, you know, if you think something's really cool and interesting to study and you're going to say, no, it's too risky, I'm not going to do it, then you've lost the purpose of why you got into this business in the first place.

• 33:08Flora Lichtman?

  What is the purpose of science?

• 33:13Speaker 02

  I mean, the, you know, the first thing I would say is, you know, science should be for science's sake. That's what it has been through centuries. And the whole idea is that society needs to trust science, that if you let people do curiosity-driven research, understand the world inside us to around us, including all the way to astronomy, to biology, that incredibly important, practical things will emerge and will be good for society if used properly. And so not interfering with science and supporting science is the, is the whole idea.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  And I feel very strongly about this. And when I, for example, we have a new finding and I'm talking to a journalist, the question I always, always get, "How is this useful?" And of course, I answer the way we always think that what we find is going to have a predicted application. But I always take the opportunity to say that many scientific findings find applications and uses in ways that initial people who found it never even imagined it. You know, whole CRISPR technology of manipulating DNA is a perfect example. You know, it was how viruses infect bacteria. You could have looked at it and say,

• 34:42Speaker 02

  "N I H should not support this. What's the, what's the relevance of viruses infecting bacteria?" And here we are. It's one of the biggest new technologies that's being used very strongly in biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry. So science for science's sake and let the, let the good things happen without us anticipating or knowing at the get-go of how that's going to work out.

• 35:06Flora Lichtman?

  What are your words of wisdom for young people getting into science or considering it as a career?

• 35:12Speaker 02

  You know, if it's a passion, which I've been lucky enough to find, then, then, then go for it. And that's the big advice of science should be fun. I'm coming back to this. And I think I see many students, young students now worried about funding and papers being accepted, et cetera, and career progression.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  Being a little bit old school and just finding the science that you love and doing it, and all these other more practical things will fall into place is-

• 35:46Flora Lichtman?

  Dream a little.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  Dream a little more. Dream a little more. That's a good way of putting it.

• 35:52Flora Lichtman?

  Dr. Ardem Patapoutian is professor and the Presidential Endowed Chair in Neurobiology in the Department of Neuroscience at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, and a 2021 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Ardem, thank you for talking with me today.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

• 36:10Flora Lichtman?

  This episode was produced by Charles Berquist. I'm Flora Lichtman, and thank you for listening.